The Mark Boslough Affair

Who is Mark Boslough anyway? He is a “physicist. He is a member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories, an adjunct professor at University of New Mexico.” And is best known for his “work on airbursts [which] challenged the conventional view of asteroid collision risk and is now widely accepted by the scientific community. He was the first scientist to suggest that the Libyan Desert Glass was formed by melting due to overhead heating from an airburst. His hypothesis was popularized by the documentaries “Tutunkhamun’s Fireball” (BBC) [wiki].

[Note for those involved in the Climate Wars – Yes, strictly speaking, this all means that he is, like myself, “not a climate scientist”.]

So why has he spent over a decade (he admits to at least 13 years) attacking an obscure 1998 paper by Arthur B. Robinson, Sallie L. Baliunas, Willie Soon, and Zachary W. Robinson titled “Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide”? [hereafter R98, shortened from ‘Robinson et al. (1998)’]. Why did he launch an attack on this very same paper as recently as 17 January 2017 in a post at the RealClimateblog titled “Non-condensable Cynicism in Santa Fe”? He has, in fact, made a sort-of sub-career out of attacking this particular paper – for example: here and here.

I must admit it is a continuing mystery to me, though I have been looking into this affair for the last 48 hours. My attention was drawn to it by a guest post here at WUWT by Trond Arne Pettersen titled “Friday Funny – ‘RealClimate’ gets shipwrecked in the Sargasso Sea”. At first my interest was that Mr. Pettersen had so misunderstood why Mark Boslough was saying the graph had been doctored. Pettersen had it wrong, the issue wasn’t that the time axis has been reversed.

But there was something that struck me odd. It is 2017 (the year Two Thousand and Seventeen, a fact that still seems unlikely to me) and yet here is a current blog post on RealClimate that is attacking a paper published in 1998, nearly 20 years ago.

“I attended the Third in the series [of the “Santa Fe Conference on Global & Regional Climate Change”], which was held the week of Oct 31, 2011. I reported on it here in my essay “Climate cynicism at the Santa Fe conference”. Lloyd Keigwin, a senior scientist and oceanographer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and another top-of-his-field researcher. We submitted an abstract together about his paleotemperature reconstruction of Sargasso Sea surface temperature.”

“We submitted an abstract together about his paleotemperature reconstruction of Sargasso Sea surface temperature…. I had updated it with modern SST measurements, and in our abstract we pointed out that it had been misused by contrarians who had removed some of the data, replotted it, and mislabeled it to falsely claim that it was a global temperature record showing a cooling trend.”

My purpose here in this essay to try to discover:

Who is Misrepresenting whom?

Now, in the present, Boslough repeats the same attack, five and a half years later, at RC, showing the following two images:

While attempting to find the original R98, I stumbled on Robinson et al. (2007) [hereafter R07], which has the same title and cites R98 [imagine how this confuses search engines…]. Robinson et al. (2007) is a “ten-years-later” review of the original R98, with some additional data and re-writing to bring it up to date. The image and caption in R07 for the contested graph is this:

“Figure 1: Surface temperatures in the Sargasso Sea, a 2 million square mile region of the Atlantic Ocean, with time resolution of 50 to 100 years and ending in 1975, as determined by isotope ratios of marine organism remains in sediment at the bottom of the sea (3). The horizontal line is the average temperature for this 3,000-year period. The Little Ice Age and Medieval Climate Optimum were naturally occurring, extended intervals of climate departures from the mean. A value of 0.25 °C, which is the change in Sargasso Sea temperature between 1975 and 2006, has been added to the 1975 data in order to provide a 2006 temperature value.”

That caption seems pretty clear to me, there is no “misrepresentation” as to what the graph is intended to show and the data is properly attributed to the original source, Keigwin (1996) (the footnote 3), with a note about the 2006 temperature datum.

The textual information in R07 about this graph is given as:

“Atmospheric and Surface Temperatures

“Atmospheric and surface temperatures have been recovering from an unusually cold period. During the time between 200 and 500 years ago, the Earth was experiencing the “Little Ice Age.” It had descended into this relatively cool period from a warm interval about 1,000 years ago known as the “Medieval Climate Optimum.” This is shown in Figure 1 for the Sargasso Sea.”

“During the Medieval Climate Optimum, temperatures were warm enough to allow the colonization of Greenland. These colonies were abandoned after the onset of colder temperatures. For the past 200 to 300 years, Earth temperatures have been gradually recovering. Sargasso Sea temperatures are now approximately equal to the average for the previous 3,000 years. The historical record does not contain any report of “global warming” catastrophes, even though temperatures have been higher than they are now during much of the last three millennia.”

Kip Hansen’s link is not to the 1998 version of the paper, but to Robinson’s (colorized and slightly-rewritten) 2007 version that he republished only *after* I confronted him in 2004 about his 1998 misrepresentation. For the 2007 paper he added the fabricated 2006 temperature data that he compared to the paleotemp data in order to claim temps are below the 3000-year mean. He simply made up the 2006 temperature data point.

[ paragraphs snipped – to be revealed later on ]

Clearly, Boslough does not like the updated R07 version any better than R98 and makes a new accusation – “He simply made up the 2006 temperature data point.” R07 clearly explains the origins of the 2006 datum and characterizes it as “approximately equal to the average for the previous 3,000 years.” Deep reading into this more-than-a-decade long attack reveals that there seems to be some uncertainty about the calculation of the 2006 datum on that graph – but a reading of the text shows that it is not in any way a major point of the paper. Further, Boslough has elevated R98 to new heights of influence – in the same comment linked above, he says:

“By 2007 Robinson had already conned most of his victims into signing the Oregon petition. …. I was hoping for a chance to explain all this in Santa Fe to those like Hansen who are still confused by Robinson’s trick.”

“Already conned” PhDed scientists into signing the Oregon Petition – and even managed to “confuse” …whom? He says “in Santa Fe to those like Hansen who are still confused by Robinson’s trick.” Now I am confused…but not by Robinson, but by Boslough….does Boslough mean me? (my name is Hansen, but I’m wasn’t going to Santa Fea) or does he mean some other Hansen who was likely to be at Santa Fe for the meeting?

What we do know is that Boslough has made a many-years-long effort attacking an obscure paper published in an open source minor league journal – all on two little points – all about a single graph, which is 1 out of 23 in the paper.

The claim that R98 “deleted instrument data” from a graph produced by Keigwin (1996).

The claim that R98 misrepresented “local temperature” as “global temperature.

And, when R98 is re-worked 9 years later, Boslough throws in another claim that a single datum (2006 Sargasso Sea Surface Temperature) was “simply made up.”

So, Who is Mispresenting Whom?

Let’s take the points one by one:

Point # 1: The claim that R98 “deleted instrument data” from a graph produced by Keigwin (1996).

Here is Figure 2 from R98 with its original caption, as an image from the pdf file at the publishing journal: (heading at the top is mine)

This is obviously not what Boslough uses in his presentation when he claims “misrepresentation”. The caption is straightforward, describing the data shown and crediting it to Keigwin (1996) in the footnote. We note that there is no “instrumental data” shown on this graph, but it is not Keigwin’s graph, just Keigwin’s paleo-data. The R98 graph is clearly and only about the paleo-data – so though the graph of the paleo-data in Keigwin’s paper had instrumental data added on, there is no fault to be attached to not using it when showing only the paleo-data. To say it has been “deleted” would only be true if R98 had represented the graph as being copied from Keigwin (1996), which it certainly isn’t. Keigwin’s graph looked like this (the graph in question is the lower of the two):

Keigwin’s associated text (the very last paragraph of Keigwin (1996)), which is in general agreement with the point being made in R98, reads:

“Because climate events like the LIA and MWP were of long enough duration (decades to centuries) to be resolved in Bermuda Rise sediments, and because the changes described here for surface waters over the Bermuda Rise are probably typical of a large part of the western Sargasso Sea, they most likely reflect climate change on the basin or hemispheric scale. Regardless of the exact cause for the LIA, the MWP, and earlier oscillations, the warming during the 20th century (0.5°C)2 is not unprecedented. However, it is important to distinguish natural climate change from anthropogenic effects because human influence may be occurring at a time when the climate system is on the warming limb of a natural cycle.”

You decide: Who is mispresenting whom? Does R98 misrepresent the paleo-data of Keigwin ’96? Does correctly referring to data from a colleague’s paper, properly cited, require one to actually copy the original graph image? Is it scientific misconduct to re-graph properly credited, properly cited and properly labelled data to suit one’s own paper?

Point # 2: The claim that R98 misrepresented “local temperature” as “global temperature.”

The image of the graph and its caption are shown in Point # 1. The caption does not misrepresent anything, but clearly describes the data graphed and credits Keigwin.

So where does Boslough get the misrepresentation claim shown in his image (far above, labelled in red, as Figure 2 of Robinson et al. (1998)), which shows, appearing visually as if it were the caption, “For the past 300 years, global temperatures have been gradually recovering. As shown in figure 2, they are still a little below the average for the past 3,000 years.” (highlighted words are shown in red in Boslough’s image).

This is not the caption seem in R98, nothing even close. So where does it come from? It is an excerpt from the text of the paper in the section headed “Atmospheric and Surface Temperatures“: (I have highlighted the text excerpted by Boslough)

“In any case, what effect is the rise in C02 having upon the global environment? The temperature of the Earth varies naturally over a wide range. Figure 2 summarizes, for example, surface temperatures in the Sargasso Sea (a region of the Atlantic Ocean) during the past 3,000 years.’ Sea surface temperatures at this location have varied over a range of about 3.6 degrees Celsius (°C) during the past 3,000 years. Trends in these data correspond to similar features that are known from the historical record.”

“For example, about 300 years ago, the Earth was experiencing the “Little Ice Age.” It had descended into this relatively cool period from a warm interval about 1,000 years ago known as the “Medieval Climate Optimum.” During the Medieval Climate Optimum, temperatures were warm enough to allow the colonization of Greenland. These colonies were abandoned after the onset of colder temperatures. For the past 300 years, global temperatures have been gradually recovering.11 As shown in figure 2, they are still a little below the average for the past 3,000 years. The human historical record does not report “global warming” catastrophes, even though temperatures have been far higher during much of the last three millennia.”

[Note: Footnote 11, to which the sentence including the words “global temperatures” refers, is a cite “11. Lamb, H. H. (1982) Climate, History, and the Modern World, pub New York: Methuen.”]

The first paragraph of the text clearly states that “Figure 2 summarizes, for example, surface temperatures in the Sargasso Sea (a region of the Atlantic Ocean) during the past 3,000 years.7” The footnote 7 cites Keigwin 1996. I would have certainly worded the second sentence of the highlighted portion a little differently, just for clarity sake…in fact, in Robinson et al. (2007), they do so, using this in its place: “For the past 200 to 300 years, Earth temperatures have been gradually recovering26. Sargasso Sea temperatures are now approximately equal to the average for the previous 3,000 years.” [Footnote 26 cites Lamb’s book as above.] But, taken in its context in the two paragraphs above, there is clearly no misrepresentation of Figure 2 as being global temperatures. Boslough has stripped two sentences out of their context to make the claim.

You decide: Who is mispresenting whom? Does R98 “misrepresent” “local temperature” as “global temperature”? Is the R98 graph mislabeled? Does the caption in R98 state that the data is “global”? Or does Boslough misrepresent R98 with his images, with a textual excerpt made to appear as if it were the original caption? Does Boslough take text out of context to make a poorly worded phrase seem like a “misrepresentation” and a “trick”?

Point # 3: When R98 is re-worked 9 years later, and published as Robinson et al. (2007) Boslough claims that a single datum (2006 Sargasso Sea Surface Temperature) was “simply made up.”

The image of the 2007 graph and its caption is above, but digital space is cheap, I show it again for your convenience:

And its caption:

“Figure 1: Surface temperatures in the Sargasso Sea, a 2 million square mile region of the Atlantic Ocean, with time resolution of 50 to 100 years and ending in 1975, as determined by isotope ratios of marine organism remains in sediment at the bottom of the sea (3). The horizontal line is the average temperature for this 3,000-year period. The Little Ice Age and Medieval Climate Optimum were naturally occurring, extended intervals of climate departures from the mean. A value of 0.25 °C, which is the change in Sargasso Sea temperature between 1975 and 2006, has been added to the 1975 data in order to provide a 2006 temperature value.”

Boslough has strongly contested the accuracy of the 2006 Sargasso Sea Surface temperature datum included by Robinson et al. in this re-writing and update of the 1998 paper. Boslough and Keigwin tried to present a refutation of R2007 (on this point) at the Third Santa Fe Conference on Global and Regional Climate Change (2011) but reports that they –

“…received a rejection letter from [Petr] Chylek, who told us,

“This Conference is not a suitable forum for type of presentations described in submitted abstract. We would accept a paper that spoke to the science, the measurements, the interpretation, but not simply an attempted refutation of someone else’s assertions (especially when made in unpublished reports and blog site).”

In the same link, Boslough talks about emails with Robinson, Soon, and a personal conversation with Fred Singer on the issue, which apparently has been left unresolved, sat least for Boslough.

You decide: Who is mispresenting whom? Does the R07 graph caption – attributing the 2006 data point to “A value of 0.25 °C, which is the change in Sargasso Sea temperature between 1975 and 2006, has been added to the 1975 data in order to provide a 2006 temperature value.” – evidence that it was “simply made up.”? Is Boslough’s dissatisfaction with the answers he has received (over the now many years) proof of anything? Even if the datum is in fact incorrect, does that justify the years of accusations? Would that one datum, in 1 figure in a paper containing 23 figures, even if incorrect, change the over-riding message of Robinson et al. (2007)?

YOU DECIDE: Does any of the data presented here justify in any way Boslough’s years of repeated and continuing attacks on Robinson et al. (1998)?

My Opinion: Mark Boslough’s attacks, as I have documented, are themselves gross misrepresentations of Robinson’s work.

“The 1998 version seems to have been swept under the rug, and I only have the hard copy that came to me in a mass mailing with the Oregon Petition. It was published in a “Medical Sentinal” which was the pamphlet distributed by a political pressure group called the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. Since it is not a science publication and is neither peer reviewed nor archived, it may not be available online.”

By his own admission, Mark Boslough has never seen nor read a real copy of the paper he has been publicly attacking, apparently at every chance, for years and years-for far more than a decade. He has been relying on “the hard copy that came to [him] in a mass mailing with the Oregon Petition.” His idea of a reliable source for copies of scientific papers, one important enough for him to stage years and years of [false and misleading] attacks, is, apparently, JUNK MAIL.

* * * * *

Author’s Comment Policy:

This essay is about Mark Boslough’s seemingly never-ending attack on a rather obscure (and since updated) paper — Robinson (1998) – to which Boslough attaches almost supernatural powers of influence. I am happy to discuss and respond to comments about the very narrow issue here: Boslough’s false and misleading attacks on Robinson (1998).

I am not interested in discussing the further details any of the papers under discussion – I have provided links to pdfs of the actual journal pages to ensure accuracy in reporting. Feel free to carry on about their contents but know I will not join in.

I do not engage in arguments about Climate Science, which I find boring.

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101 thoughts on “The Mark Boslough Affair”

I find Robinson et al 2007 to be a ludicrous “paper” that Willie Soon should not have put his name on. C’mon children, either write a proper paper dealing ONLY with local phenomenology, or a general essay about how wonderful it is to live in the Climate Optimum of today, but this attempt is neither one nor the other, and fully deserves the attention of what remains of the Hockey Team.

climanrecon ==> An interesting opinion.The paper is, on the face of it, a review of the current science on CO2 effects circa 1998, which was then re-wokred to bring it “up-to-date” nine years later. It is not an original research paper, that’s for sure, nor was it meant to be — see the title.

I find it fascinating that Boslough seems to feel that this one paper, in fact, the single Figure, has been largely responsible for climate skepticism. .

Kip, I find it shameful that all this time and effort was paid for by taxpayers.
Maybe if he were a consultant and had to produce usable results he wouldn’t have time to carry on like this so long. Another example of government workers abusing the tax payers. I know he is from Sandia, but that National Laboratory is funded almost entirely by tax payer money.

I still don’t understand what’s going on here. Is the added data point a marine organism isotope ratio or not? If it isn’t, where does it come from? I would be equally sceptical of it as I am of surface data spliced into a proxy reconstruction.

Robinson ==> Agree with you on this: ” I would be equally sceptical of it as I am of surface data spliced into a proxy reconstruction.” Me too.

Boslough complained and attacked Robinson 1998 for years about the [incorrectly alledged] “deletion” of “instrument data” from Keigwin’s graph of his paleo-data. Keigwin had added Station S data to his 1996 figure to make a quite different point about long-term vs. short-term variability (see text in the essay above)..

Robinson et al. state simply in the caption “A value of 0.25 °C, which is the change in Sargasso Sea temperature between 1975 and 2006, has been added to the 1975 data in order to provide a 2006 temperature value.” Since they are writing in 2007, this would be the last complete year of contemporary data on Sargasso Sea Surface Temperature. It seems to me to be added just to approximately answer the question: “So if that’s the paleo data, what’s the general range of temperature today?”

Robinson et al. do the right thing though by NOT attaching it in any way to the paleo-data, they simply put an isolated dot on the figure.

Do they reference how they got that 0.25 C or from where? Of course, if it was really 0.2 or 0.3, it would not matter at all to the argument being made. I don’t understand why it is that big of a deal. I assume they took it from either more paleo data or more likely from thermometer measurements of the sea surface. Do they elaborate on that?

One way to get up the nose of activist scholars is to quote their own words back at them. The examples I am thinking about are men’s rights activists quoting the words of feminist scholars but the basic principle should apply to climate alarmist scholars who are quoted by skeptics. In that regard, Keigwin should be the one who is affronted and horrified.

My best guess is Boslough was horrified that both the Medieval Climate Optimum and the Little Ice Age was presented as a wide spread phenomena and even worse was the use of a 3 millennium average for temperatures! All of that substantially weakens the premises that the current warming was dramatic, unprecedented, caused by anthropogenic CO2 and a hazard to the environment.

Paul Jackson ==> One of the odder features of this affair is that Keigwin has been working with Boslough on his atcks on TR98 attacks on R98 — but it is Keigwin’s data, figure and text that establish the MWP and the LIA. I quote the Keigwin’s text just below his figure (the one with two graphs and a lot of caption text along the left and bottom). It is not R98 that establishes the MWP and the LIA — it is Boslough’s buddy and co-attack-dog — Lloyd Keigwin in his 1996 paper (which Boslough accuses Robinson of doctoring).

If you accept the consensus then you are a Climate Scientist, even if you are a Historian, Psychologist, or Cartoonist. If you don’t, then you aren’t, even if you are a Marine Hydrologist, Atmospheric Physicist, or NASA Astronaut.

Sure they are. I see no difference between them – they are identical if you simply ignore colors and look at shape alone.
You also conveniently omitted caption to figure 2 – which explains where the dot for 2006 came from.

You might need to spend about 30 sec to figure things out – but it’s supposed to be a science paper, not children’s pop-up book, readers are expected to actually try to understand what it is they are reading…

As to why, I assume that authors thought that this makes it easier to understand. You disagree? It’s your opinion, you are entitled to it.

Leftists are required by Law to find even the most miniscule reference to Christianity confusing and offensive. And in accordance to victimhood politics, inform everyone around them of their feeling about it. >¿<

Neo ==> I think they did it because the general public understand BCE/CE [ or BC/AD ] better than “years before the present. Using years before the present, with zero on the left increasing to the right as Keigwin does in his 1996 original figure, might lead some to misunderstand the time element — getting it backwards in their minds. .

The graphs are from different papers published in different decades (not to mention millennia). I’ve been reading similar works for over 50 years, and the graphs are fully consistent with publication standards that Mr. Kernodle is evidently not familiar with on a day-to-day basis.

… and in THIS version attributed as the 1998 version, I found the following graph:

This is NOT the same graph that you (Kip Hansen) attribute to Robinson et al. in your link to what claimsis a copy of the original Robinson et al. paper

So, my question is: Does ANYBODY know where that blasted zero was in the original Robinson et al. paper? … on the left?, on the right?, somewhere in between?

If we can quibble about portions of a degree within a one-degree range, then we can quibble about the consistency of placing a “zero” on a graph attributed in different ways by different people to the same original authors.

I have no trouble seeing that the graphs communicate the same information. The issue is EXACTLY, … VISUALLY, what did the original Robinson et al. graph look like the way it was originally published?

If the guy at RealClimate can make an issue of the order of the timeline (which, yeah, is irrelevant as far as meaning goes), then, at least, we can confirm that HIS claim of reversal is true or not, in order to have an even stronger basis for saying that his critique is lame. At least, we will have preserved the EXACT ORIGINAL and not fudged it ourselves to bolster our own claim, which stands alone without any fudging.

If I am missing something here, then apologies. My confusion now is in respect to the exact visual appearance of the original Robinson et al. graph. I am a visual artist, so these things matter to me.

This second image is a cropped screen-capture from the original publishers pdf file, to which I have added a heading to identify it as Robinson (1998). I say cropped because my image used here has the original journal’s page footer showing “Medical Sentinel — Volume 3 Number 5 – September/October 1998 — 171”. I take it you captured it from the essay and uploaded it to DropBox.

So far so good.

You then go to the website of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons
, http://www.jpands.org, where the the supplied link leads you to a pdf (made up of images of the actual pages) of the original published journal copy of Robinson et al. (1998).

Still good.

In the pdf of Robinson (1998), you will notice that the journal name is “Medical Sentinel”, as I mention above, which is the original name of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.

Using the search function at http://www.jpands.org searching the title of the paper “Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide” will return (down past the ads) these two entries:

Now, pay attention: As I mention in passing in the essay, there are TWO Robinson et al. papers with the same title. They are both represented above in the two search returns. The first (Vol 12 No. 3) is Robinson et al. (2007). The second is Robinson et al. (1998).

The image contained in this reprint is exactly the same data and the same caption (as is the rest of the paper) re-typeset and re-printed, with one exception — the time axis has been relabeled for consumption by non-scientists — changed from “Years Before Present” as originally published in the Medical Sentinel to “Year” in the re-print used in UK. I have no idea who re-typeset and re-printed the paper for them.

But to answer this question: “Does ANYBODY know where that blasted zero was in the original Robinson et al. paper?” Yes, you do now, if you have read all the above. You will have seen a photographic (scanned) image of the original journal pages provided by the journal. So that is the visual of the “original” and in that version, they used “Years Before Present” as the time axis with zero on the right representing “now”, “zero years before present”.

The graph in the re-print is equally correct, however, with the “zero” representing Year 0 (the year between BCE1 and CE1, which we grew up calling BC1 and AD1)which from the year 2000 is 2000 years ago. Thus comparing the two graphs you see 0 and 2000 coincide, as they represent the same year.

As for this: “If the guy at RealClimate can make an issue of the order of the timeline” — Boslough did not make this claim, he is a physicist, after all. The Friday Funny post here at WUWT was sorely and totally in error on that point. This is mentioned in the fourth paragraph of my essay.

If this doesn’t do it for you, please email me at kip at the domain i4 decimal net.

The OISM petition has always been a thorn in the side of alarmists. It torches their consensus claims. I think that is the reason this paper has gotten so much attention from the team. When propaganda is easily refuted it makes those pushing the propaganda look silly.

In addition, the logic of the paper is pure simplicity. It really isn’t different now than it has been for thousands of years. This destroys yet another of their propaganda points that today is somehow different. They simply cannot think rationally when faced with reality.

I never heard of Dr Boslough before, but I don’t normally read the Huffington Post ‘science’ pages. He appears to be a regular ‘sciency guy’ there eloquently writing on some (I have to admit) interesting subjects, I intend to eventually take a look at one or two more articles.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/mark-boslough-593.
On the subject of ‘graph’ misrepresentation it appears to me to be some kind of personal vendetta of a someone who may have minor mental disorder.
From wikipedia: “…. He used this experience to argue that the “right to radiate” is a prescriptive private property right, and that carbon polluters must compensate individuals for degrading their personal cooling capacity.”

v ==> “some kind of personal vendetta” — that or some kind of obsession with this issue. What makes it worse is that he is the one misrepresenting things….he’s out there in important venues making a fool of himself to anyone who bothers to read the original papers.

they all get repetitious because the words aren’t used for reasoning but as incantations in a ritual of magical thinking.
when the attempt to cast a spell fails, they do it again louder and/or form a prayer circle and hold hands while they chant.

I believe he was the guy that with his “Airburst ” theory explained why nobody had found any traces of a meteoroid or asteroid in the 1908 explosion over Siberia.There was a documentary recently in which there were about 4-5 theories explained , his is now fairly widely seen as the most likely one. There are people that looked for decades to find traces of a meteoroid but never found a thing even the Russian government spend a long time looking thinking it could find rare metals and even diamonds in large quantities.

Boslough is a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, publisher of the Skeptical Inquirer, oroginally an organization of “skeptics,” but has now morphed into a left-wing advocacy group (and from which I recently resigned as a longtime Fellow). He is very influential with that crowd, who steadfastly refuse to even consider the possibility that climate advocacy might be other than ‘pure science.’. I have had ongoing arguments with Boslough on Facebook, where he echoes the pronouncements of his good friend Michael Mann. He is tricky, do not expect a sincere discussion or argument, you will get rhetorical tricks and ad hominems. When I pressed Boslough about activists and politicians who wanting to lock up climate skeptics, he refused to condemn it, suggesting that they deserved it.

Robert ==> I am aware of Boslough’s involvement with the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry — and purposefully omitted it from my essay to limit the focus to just this one thing — his unending false attacks on Robinson (1998).

Thanks for your input, I don’t mind your bringing it up, even though I chose not to.

My layman’s opinion on this:
Boslough is saying when you add Keigwin’s 1996 “Station S” data from the last few decades to the graph it shows an especially sharp uptick, indicative of something more than a natural rise — he says it shows anthropogenic warming ON TOP OF natural warming trends. Yet the R98 paper leaving this off, and the R07 paper just putting one data point for 2006, both mask this interpretation of what the graph shows. This is why he thinks that data point is “made up” and he has been attacking it so long because the original paper is otherwise evidence useful to skeptics of AGW theory. I think he has a good point, but I would like to see exactly what the graph would look like if it is possible to accurately add real data since 1975 to the end of the graph. Is there an anthropogenic signal there or not?

TDBraun ==> It is entirely improper to attach contemporary instrumental data to a graph of paleo-proxy data. Keigwin has explained his reason for doing so, to make a point about greater variability in the past than in the 40-year long instrument data, and gives the opinion that this might mean something … but it is only a conjecture and can only be that.

As you know, the Keigwin paleo-data should come with some sort of error bars, which would be on the magnitude of at least > +/- 1°C. (Thermometer data from before the digital age carries a standing +/-0.5°C range — and paleo-proxy temps are far less certain.)

The instrumental data should never have been shown on the same figure with the same scale — they are can not correctly be related that way.

“The instrumental data should never have been shown on the same figure with the same scale — they are can not correctly be related that way.”

Yes, you can not mix paleo data and an instrumental record in one plot without calculating a long term average for the instrumental record. In this case, the paleo resolution was 50-100 years which means that each sample is the AVERAGE of 50-100 years of climate, so the instrumental record must be averaged across 50 to 100 year chunks, which likely exceeds the period that we have an instrumental record for. It should be obvious that the volatility and p-p variability of a 50-100 year average will be far less than the volatility and p-p variability from instantaneous samples, or even 1-5 year averages.

This is something that the warmists do over and over. Didn’t any of them ever take a course in basic statistics? For example, the DomeC ice core record shows that the RMS rate of change in 50-100 year averages over the last 100K years is comparable to the rate of change seen in contemporary short term averages of instrumental measurements. This means that historical short term rates of change, which we can not distinguish from the ice cores, were necessarily far larger.

co2isnotevil ==> Yes, I thiunk you are right about the Keigwin figure — putting instrumental data on the same graph at the same scale etc. Totally improper.

The paleo-data is 50 year running average, there is only 40 years of instrrument data, there are nbo error bars or even CIs on the paleo-data…conflating them makes the paleo-data look like it actually measures temperature — which it does not, certainly not to anything near an accuracy in single digit degrees.

Is it even a running average? That would imply shorter term samples that were averaged. If the sample width is 50-100 years, it can’t be a 50-100 year running average, but just static averages of 50-100 years of data. You can perhaps do a running 500 year average, but that would smooth out nearly all the bumps in the graph …

co2isnotevil ==> Keigwin’s caption, image supplied inm the essay, states “…after averaging the data in 50-year intervals”. It is paleo-data, which does not come in one year increments, if it comes at all.

co2isnoteval “Didn’t any of them ever take a course in basic statistics?”

That has been the entire foundation of Steve McIntyre’s blog (Climate Audit) from “day 1”. The answer is “no, apparently not”. Dr. Judith Curry has also tried to point out uncertainty in this area which has not been well-received by the climate “scientists”.

Thee problem with climate change/global warming as related to co2 is and always will be the MWP and the LIA. Skeptics shouldn’t have to prove anything. It’s the warmist theory,( AGW) . Other than dismissing that they didn’t exist, or now admitting they existed but weren’t that warm or cold, they have never explained how they occured in the absence of elevated or decreased levels of co2.
Is this just an argument of the subset of basic temperature increase or decrease during that time ?

Mark Boslough’s problem is one suffered by many of the Climate Faithful. He clearly has a narcissistic personality disorder. Just as Gleick’s forged Heartland memo revealed that he believed the whole Climate issue revolved around him and his blogging at Forbes, Boslough’s obsession shows he think the whole Climate Skeptic movement is based on the one bit that he had something to do with. So obviously if he can just get everyone e to accept HIS version of the Sargasso Sea data, Climate Skepticism would end.

And from reading between the lines on his Real Climate article I’d say even many on the Believers side are getting tired of him. The whole reason for that article (and the one from last time he links to) is that the people who run the San Francisco convention he’s writing about have stopped letting him give the same boring presentation about this minor issue from 98 over and over again.

I’d like to say I’m surprised RC gave him a soapbox to stand on, but frankly this is about all they have left. And they know THEIR readership sure won’t look to hard into this or hear anything from outside the echo chamber. ~¿~

schitzree ==> Boslough, when not obsessing about Robinson (1998), is a “science popularizer” and writes in several venues about his own topic — asteroids and airbursts and potential disaster from them. He has some standing as a physicist along those lines.

Boslough’s attacks on R98 equate to attacks on the MWP and LIA and the Oregon Petition. From RC’s viewpoint, what’s not to like?

Oh, sure. He probably is a fine scientist in his own right, and in his sphere. A lot of scientists are narcissistic or egotistical.

Hell, I’ll go one further. The BEST scientists (the ones that change the direction their fields are going in, or revolutionize how we see the world) are usually extreme egotists. You have to be to face a huge consensus of earlier scientist and say ‘Nope, it really goes like THIS!’. Think Galileo.

Of course, it also works in reverse. Once an Ego happy scientist thinks he knows how things are, it’s hard to convince him of something else. Which is why, as they say, ‘Science advances one funeral at a time’. ^¿^

You are right about his personality schitzree, just read his list of documentaries and films he has “participated in” I have seen some of them and it is his way or the highway. You should read the chapter about private property rights.

Algore, et.al. have always found past reconstructions of temperature
an inconvenient truth.

In Algore’s original movie of that title, he showed the very much enlarged
and elongated temperature graph of the northern hemisphere which we
would all recognize, but flashed through it too quickly for the viewer to
be able to resolve the Medieval Warm or the Little Ice Age. The focus
stopped on the bit of the graph which showed temperature recovery
since start of the industrial revolution.

When Algore and company realized that digital video recorders and
dvd players had the capacity to slow motion and stop motion, they changed
later copies of the movie to use Mikey’s Hockey Stick.

I screened both copies for my nieces, nephews, and grand children
and explained the “real inconvenient” truth.

Jerry had not heard of that before.
If true is a very inconvenient truth. Will have to get my old cd out. You should let Anthony know, if he does not know already .too late for great value but still a very important fact.

philjourdan ==> This is the true value of civil discourse following essays or papers presented in blog format on the ‘net. This feature was a large part of Dr. Judith Curry’s decision to interact with “the enemy” (skeptics) via the blog Climate Etc..

I am, at best, a very minor player in all of this but I have a personal policy — a commitment — that I will read every comment made to any of my published essays where ever they appear and make a good faith effort o answer my reader’s questions — even if the readers is emotional and ill-mannered. (I do not, however, suffer trolls gladly).

The R98 graph is clearly and only about the paleo-data – so though the graph of the paleo-data in Keigwin’s paper had instrumental data added on, there is no fault to be attached to not using it when showing only the paleo-data.

So his complaint is that the paper does not splice apples with oranges?

Are you sure you understand him correctly?
Or are you sure this guy is not a false flag sock-puppet?

I have been an AGW skeptic since the spring of 2001. At the time, I was working on nuclear power and renewable energy. Because of my work it was convenient to credit reductions in CO2.

You can tell how old people are by the significant emotional events. For my generation, it was the assassination of JFK and the shuttle disaster. Shared with my children 9/11.

While attending a renewable energy conference in Seattle, I listen to a presentation by a lawyer who claimed that he gave the presentation in the Whitehouse to Clinton/Gore. I became a CAGW believer. Before that I thought that the science was still out.

A few days later I had a chance to look closer at the notes and read some of the references on detail. I am ashamed to admit that I was bamboozled by a slick lawyer.

From that point on, I was an ardent AGW skeptic.

AGW is a theory about the future. Not a very good one when we look at the most recent million years of geological data. When considering the Medieval Warm or the Little Ice Age, there is a simple commonsense explanation. If it is warmer than average, the next trend will be cooling. If it is cooler than normal, the next trend will be warming.

I see no difference between them – they are identical if you simply ignore colors and look at shape alone.

You also conveniently omitted caption to figure 2 – which explains where the dot for 2006 came from.

You might need to spend about 30 sec to figure things out – but it’s supposed to be a science paper, not children’s pop-up book, readers are expected to actually try to understand what it is they are reading…

As to why, I assume that authors thought that this makes it easier to understand. You disagree? It’s your opinion, you are entitled to it.

I think that I understand things pretty well here, Udar. I gave up children’s pop-up books years ago, be assured. (^_^)

In my post that you were referring to in this comment, I did not “conveniently forget”, but rather I was NOT focusing on the caption, but the lines and scales of the graph.

I am now questioning the attribution of a name to a specific visual appearance. Maybe this will help clear up my query:

“For the past 300 years, global temperatures have been gradually recovering.11 As shown in figure 2, they are still a little below the average for the past 3,000 years.”

These two statements are indeed comparing global temperatures and Sargasso Sea temperatures, but no reason to consider them comparable is presented in the surrounding two paragraphs.

The graph only shows that Sargasso Sea temperatures are still a little below the average, while “they” seems to refer to global temperatures. Perhaps some people are interpreting the pronoun “they” in two different ways.

Anonymoose ==> The two sentences must not be taken out of context. The entire two paragraphs of the section titled “Atmospheric and Surface Temperatures“ represents the context for them.

The immediately preceding paragraph, the first of the two paragraphs in this section, states very very clearly:

“Figure 2 summarizes, for example, surface temperatures in the Sargasso Sea (a region of the Atlantic Ocean) during the past 3,000 years.’ “

.

What it does NOT say, and what it can not be twisted to say or mean or imply, is that Figure 2 is a graph of “global” temperatures. No one reading the paper would or could possibly think that Robinson et al. “mislabeled” Figure two as “global” temperatures, which is the false charge made by Boslough (for over a decade now).

The point of these two paragraphs is that these indicators and proxies can themselves stand as a proxy for general trends of global temperatures. In your quote of the two sentences, you correctly include the “11” which points to Footnote #11, a cite to Hurbert Lamb‘s seminal book “Climate, History, and the Modern World” [pdf of the entire book]. It is Lamb’s book that is referenced for the idea that “For the past 300 years, global temperatures have been gradually recovering” — not Robinson’s graph of Keigwin’s paleo-data.

As I note in the text of the essay, I would have worded the next sentence differently for more clarity, but it certainly can not be taken out of its overall context — “As shown in figure 2, they are still a little below the average for the past 3,000 years. ” implies the use of Keigwin’s pale-data as a proxy for general global climatic conditions (re: MWP and LIA). I provide the text from Keigwin’s 1996 paper, in thish he makes the same (or very similar) point from the same data and his original figure (text, figures, and captions all in the essay above).

I think everyone would agree that Robinson (1998) might have worded one sentence better — even Robinson et al. who change it for clarity in their 2007 paper.

I just got done reading the article over on skeptical science by Boslough that was written in 2012. The thing that most sticks with me is this part of an email from Richardson to Boslough that he quoted.

My bold

Regarding the world data. We clearly labeled this data location. Since virtually all other available dats (sic) from other locations (see Soon and Baliunas) is similar, providing this example was entirely ethical.

It is too bad your employers could not find an objective scientist for this task. I will not be providing any additional comments, since I am quite sure they would not be presented in their enirety (sic) to your employers, any more than will those I have already written. You are clearly devoted to lifting selected things from their context.

This was apparently in response to this from Boslough

You incorrectly represented the graph as global temperature. You stated, “For the past 300 years, global temperatures have been gradually recovering (11). As shown in figure 2, they are still a little below the average for the past 3,000 years.”

This is precisely the issue Kip outlined as #2 above. And as Kip showed, Richardson is right, Boslough IS lifting selected things from their context.

Now, maybe I’m reading to much into this, but it looks to me like Boslough has been making a big stink over this for over a decade. And (I could be wrong here, but I don’t think I am) it looks like Richardson et al got sick of it long ago and already rewrote their paper so there couldn’t be any misunderstanding about what was being presented. They literally answered all of Boslough’s red marked complaints, even though the only things wrong with them was they could be twisted by a nasty little troll to say things the paper clearly doesn’t.

In 2007. A Decade ago.

So why the hell is Boslough still writing articles and submitting abstracts and god knows what else about this.

The repeated attacks by Boslough have the familiar feel of attacks by creationists on evolution. Find that single flaw in your opponent even if it is small or conflated and keep working it. That flagellor motor or misplaced fossil or ‘human’ footprint. Keep working it hoping that you can bring down the entirety of the oppositions credibility and theories.

Wow you named an affair after me. I guess I’ve finally made it big in the denialsphere!

I skipped straight to you conclusion, where you employ your best logic to surmise that I have never seen or read a copy of the Robinson paper because I only have a hard copy. Thank you for the clear demonstration of your reasoning skills.

I do appreciate your help in publicizing Robinson’s misconduct.

* * * * *

My offer to him, also in comments there:

Mark Boslough ==> So, let’s clear this up once and for all.

Here’s my offer: You photograph or scan the “hard copy” you have fronm the mass mailing, the whole pages which have Figure 2, its real caption, and the text you show in your image in this post. On all the versions I’ve found (pre-prints, re-prints, re-published, actual published version) this would be pages 1 and 2, and post them here or in comments at WUWT.

If the “hard copy” you have been relying on all these years shows Figure 2 with the text you show here as the “label” or caption of Figure 2, I will write a full abject apology, post it here in comments, as a essay at WUWT, and I will send you flowers.

As RC is has not posted any of my further comments to Boslough there, including my “couldn’t be fairer offer” in the block-quoted comment above, I post my last two attempts to get through their stonewalling here:

*****
Mark Boslough ==> Glad you were amused. Naming both the affair and the essay “The Mark Boslough Affair”, which also appears in the URL, ensures that the essay will come up whenever anyone Goggles your name — just now The Mark Boslough Affair essay comes up as the fourth item, above the fold, on a general Google search for “Mark Boslough”. Happy to publicize this issue to all those interested in you — they deserve to know.

I am looking forward to seeing the images of the “hard copy” of Robinson et al. (1998) that you received “in a mass mailing”. That ought to clear up this little misunderstanding for all concerned.

Fig. 2. Surface temperatures in the Sargasso Sea (with time resolution of about 50 years) ending in 1975 as determined by isotope ratios of marine organism remains in sediment at the bottom of the sea (7). The horizontal line is the average temperature for this 3,000 year period. The Little Ice Age and Medieval Climate Optimum were naturally occurring, extended intervals of climate departures from the mean.

M Courtney ==> Sorry, don’t understand what you mean…..the link I provide just above is an archived copy of Robinson (1998) (a pre-publishing version) that was sent out in that 1998 mass mailing. It is a digital copy of the one he has been relying on for nearly twenty years….there is no version that shows anything like what he uses in his attacks (and I have looked at more than a dozen different version). His images are cobbed up nonsense, as discussed in the essay above.

My careful and exhaustive review of the papers involved shows that NONE of these accusations are true.

0. Robinson (1998) did NOT “reproduce” Keigwin’s K4B nor did they ever claim to have reproduced it. They used the data from Kwigwin (1996) to produce a new figure, labelled it for what it was (Keigwin’s Sargasso Sea Proxy paleo-data) and credited Keigwin with a proper footnote. This is a standard practice.

1. Robinson (1998) did not included Keigwin’s Station S data — they were not interested in it, only the paleo-data. As they were not reproducing Keigwin’s figure, they are free to use whatever portions of Keigwin’s data they chose, as long as due credit is given. [including instrumental data on a paleo-proxy graph is itself a highly contested practice, considered by many as improper.]

2. They did CORRECTLY indicate the time series of proxy data ended in 1975. Keigwin’s data was averaged “in 50 year intervals”, in approx. 1995 — Having any 50 year interval averaged data past 1970 or so would be difficult. Boslough’s false claim is based on Robinson not including the instrumental Station S data.

3. Robinson (1998) never once “conflated” Sargasso Sea data with global temperatures. Their Figure two is careful and correctly captioned. The text calls Figure 2 “surface temperatures in the Sargasso Sea”. After discussing the MWP and LIA as global phenomena, citing Hubert Lamb’s seminal work, they imply that the Sargasso Sea surface temperatures would indicate a partial recovery from the LIA. (This sentence is possibly poorly worded, but in context acceptable — certainly nothing like Boslough’s misleading accusation.)

4. Robinson makes no claims whatever about Keigwin, his paper or his opinions. Robinson (1998) expresses their own opinion that the Sargasso Sea temperature proxy data, acting as a proxy for global temperatures as just discussed in the text, shows global temperatures a little below the average for the past 3,000 years. (This is, of course, about the same sentence mentioned above.)

Note: When Robinson et al. re-visit this paper and do an update/re-write, they fix this ill-worded sentence and replace it with “During the time between 200 and 500 years ago, the Earth was experiencing the “Little Ice Age.” It had descended into this relatively cool period from a warm interval about 1,000 years ago known as the “Medieval Climate Optimum.” This is shown in Figure 1 for the Sargasso Sea. During the Medieval Climate Optimum, temperatures were warm enough to allow the colonization of Greenland. These colonies were abandoned after the onset of colder temperatures. For the past 200 to 300 years, Earth temperatures have been gradually recovering. Sargasso Sea temperatures are now approximately equal to the average for the previous 3,000 years.”

All of Boslough’s accusations and images he uses in his endless attack on this minor and rather obscure paper are false and are themselves gross misrepresentations.

As always, if you still have unanswered questions after reading the essay and all of my response comments above or if you have something you just have to say to me about this, you may email me at my first name at the domain i4 decimal net.

I highly recommend, to those with strong stomachs, reading Boslough’s piece at RC and reading through the comments, paying particular attention to Boslough’s replies to mine there. He is totally unrepentant, which is no surprise, I mean, realistically, how could be admit to having falsely accused Robinson et al. of scientific misconduct for so many years now? More disappointing though is that Dr. Gavin Schmidt, Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, colludes with Boslough in this. I had, until yesterday, considered him a “scientific straight-shooter”.– a man of personal integrity — which turns out not to be true. He is perfectly willing to join into knowing false accusations of scientific misconduct against a colleague. I can think of few offenses quite so reprehensible for a man of science

Maybe we’ll see other forms of scientific misbehavior, of which this is a certain example, coming out from whistle-blowers at GISS.